When I look at the San Andreas trailer, I go "Whoa! That movie might be stupid but it looks crazy fun!" Then I get a chance to watch it before everyone else does and, well, I decide to look into the movie. Director Brad Peyton: he's the guy who gave us Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and Cats & Dogs : Revenge of the Kitty Galore. OK, so he makes funny/fantasy kids movies with lots of SFX. Oh God, should I be taking San Andreas seriously after knowing this! Well here I am, writing about the movie and being as uninfluenced as I can.

San Andreas is the story of LA rescue pilot Ray (Dwayne Johnson) trying to save his family from what is described as the biggest earthquake ever recorded in human history (or at least that’s what the movie aspires to be). The story starts with a major earthquake shaking Nevada. Ray gets called in for duty and is unable to drop his daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) off at her college in San Francisco. Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd), the current boyfriend of Ray's estranged wife Emma (Carla Gugino), offers to deliver Blake the rest of the way. Calamity strikes and California is devastated by a series of earthquakes. What follows is the journey of Ray along with Emma, in search of their daughter.

San Andreas is not just about apocalyptic destruction (although it has that in spades). It’s got: the inevitable earthquake caused by the famous San Andreas fault line; an estranged couple; a seismologist who can predict earthquakes; British guy who falls for the hot girl; some emotions and some jokes. Not at all a bad recipe for a movie. But for some reason, all you take back from the movie is the apocalyptic destruction! The movie never hits the highs on emotion, though it tries its best; rather, its the lackluster screenplay that acts as the hole in the sinking boat. Things are so predictable, that you almost end up laughing when you guess something right.

Apart from being a downer on reasonability or surprise factor, the feeble script hardly justifies the characters. Paul Giamatti plays Lawrence, a seismologist who loses a colleague while working at the Hoover Dam. Can you guess the dialogues between him and the reporter who is there to cover the story?

Reporter: “I understand if you don’t want to do this right now.” Paul: “Kim lost his life over this. Now is the only time to do this.”

Or something like that.. pardon my memory. I’m sure the writer thought, it worked before, it should work again! The movie actually made me wonder who was a better actor; Dwayne, Alexandra or Carla (Psst... it’s Dwayne). Yes, you can actually see Dwayne putting his best, but alas, the real focus is on the earthquake and not him.

But hey! It’s not end-of-world for San Andreas yet (pun intended). You can surely bet your money (like the producers did) on the visuals. Quakes, collapsing buildings, tsunami; everything looks great and mostly believable (except when you see an inflatable speed boat ram into thickened glass and break it!). This brings me to some interesting reads on the rationality/plausibility of all that’s depicted. Surprisingly a lot of it is true and accurate. Once you do see the movie, I highly recommend you read the tweets by seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones (https://twitter.com/DrLucyJones [some spoilers here]).

So to sum it up, San Andreas might not be the best disaster movie that you'll ever see and if you are a serious moviegoer it might even make you question your decision to watch it (or make you blame me). But if you have no plans and casually walk into a random screen that happens to play San Andreas, you might actually come out entertained (read: not bored; I actually did like a joke about second base).

I adore Brad Bird as a director. He’s made some of my favorite movies from my childhood: The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and The Iron Giant, which is one of the few movies that makes me sob like a baby every single time I watch it without fail. He’s also proven he can direct live action very well with the series reboot Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. So I was very excited for Tomorrowland, which seemed to play to all of Bird’s strengths—family-friendly fun, action, science fiction and dazzling visuals, all with heart and soul.

Casey (Britt Robertson), brilliant and ever optimistic, discovers a pin that, when she touches it, transports her to a futuristic wonderland. Soon she meets Athena (Raffey Cassidy), the young girl who gave her the pin, and Frank (George Clooney), who visited the far off place—Tomorrowland— in his youth. All three of them get tangled in forces beyond their control—or so they think. I’m keeping the synopsis intentionally vague; I went in to Tomorrowland almost completely blind, having next to no idea what to expect. That’s mostly due to the fantastically ambiguous marketing job by Disney, and partially to me covering my ears and going lalalala during trailers.

For a Disney movie, Tomorrowland throws out a lot of big philosophical ideas. It dabbles in utopia and dystopia, global warming, revolution, even the nature of humans as a species and a society. I was struck by its similarity in some respects to the masterpiece video game Bioshock, where a utopian city attracts the brightest minds all across the world in all different fields to freely create and explore, unfettered by politics or laws or ethical concerns. Of course, Bioshock is incredibly dark and violent and deals with ethical and philosophical issues way over the heads of the PG moviegoing crowd, but Tomorrowland at least tries to be a blockbuster that makes kids think. It may reduce the complexity of its concepts down to a middle school reading level, but that intellectual core is still there.

In a lot of ways, Tomorrowland is Brad Bird’s love letter to innovation. Casey’s father is a soon-to-be out of work NASA engineer; Frank built a jetpack when he was nine years old. These are people who dream big, who don’t give up, who use their brains to accomplish amazing things. There’s a sense of nostalgia permeating through the whole film, from the retro-futuristic aesthetic of Tomorrowland to the way Casey talks about the future with such optimism and hope. It’s the same kind of nostalgia I felt when I watched Interstellar, a feeling of amazement at what we small humans can accomplish at our best. That’s Tomorrowland’s strongest feature: its inescapable sense of wonder. It’s as if Bird has captured the essence of discovery and put it to film. It’s like going on a Disney ride for the first time. (Tomorrowland is also the name of a section of the Magic Kingdom at Disney World. What a crazy and totally unintentional coincidence!)

Tomorrowland is trying to inspire a new generation of kids, and the film does more than throw a lot of You Can Do It! speeches in a shiny CGI wrapper. The film is about inspiration, invention, wonder; it’s the thread that holds the whole thing together and appeals to adults’ sense of nostalgia and kids’ ever-present curiosity. The world is dying, the film asserts. What are you doing to fix it?

Why they decided to remake Poltergeist, I’m not sure. The 1982 horror classic, ghost directed by Steven Spielberg, featured a homogenous suburban community during the Reagan administration that was clandestinely placed over a graveyard, so the skeletons of the past haunted houses and stole little children. It had the conservative message regarding the dangers of watching too much TV, and the gloriously campy special effects and static-y television sets that made the movie terrifying. 2015’s Poltergeist, this time with special 3D effects and no cute family dog, shortens the movie unsuccessfully and distributes it’s scary moments poorly, with the ending feeling especially vacant. It retains vintage lines from the original Poltergeist, but doesn’t retain any of the fear, character insanity, or even detective pseudo-jargon that made the original so special.

The Bowen family recently moved into a house in a beautiful, wealthy neighborhood. Parents Eric and Amy treat themselves out for a night and leave their older daughter to watch the other two little children, when suddenly the tree outside starts to smack into the house and the floor oozes black slime and a box of clown dolls pops up everywhere. Youngest daughter Madison walks towards her closet before arms grasp her and she becomes entrapped in the spirit of the house, and it all happens as fast as I’ve described it. The Bowen family characters are stale and whereas Carol Anne, the child prisoner of 1982’s Poltergeist, was more like a spawn of Satan, Madison is portrayed as just a victim. The family in the original movie were all driven to insanity, slowly becoming used to the flickering lights or talking to the absent Carol Anne through television signal, and this movie loses that craziness entirely. I loved that aspect because it made sense for them to have hallucinations or seem especially nutty even to detectives in the line of paranormal research. This movie still has hallucinations, but they’re more like moments where the movie just wanted to have extra empty jump-scares and the Bowen family seem mostly apathetic to getting their daughter back. There’s even a weird romantic plot between the detectives who come to inspect the house and it’s so strangely unnecessary; why the writers decided this was more mandatory over psychologically deranged family members or better buildup in the beginning… I have no idea.

There are some cool moments in the movie, but it’s all really because of the 3D effects. The shadows of Madison’s hands reaching from the TV and the skeletal arms grabbing me from beyond the screen are creative. The journey through Madison’s otherworldly closet is also interesting because it’s this dark, jungle-like area surrounded by limp skeletons and multiple fake Madisons, and it’s an area that was previously kept unknown from us in the original movie. This should be the scariest part of the movie (it’s an unexplored world of ghosts and spirits!) but it’s unsurprisingly the most boring. The technology of Poltergeist is also upgraded, with each character having GPS locations tracked and their disappearing blip from the tracking device is as scary as the movie gets sometimes. We also travel through the closet in a drone helicopter, so it becomes this wavering expedition on a glitchy screen. The ending is really unsatisfactory, as the family car drives away and it looks more like a car commercial. I’m still questioning why this was remade.

Poltergeist is too quickly done, barely scares beyond a box of clown dolls flying around a room, and features a homage to The Shining that’s just cringe-worthy. It shouldn’t have been remade, but that’s the case for a lot of horror movie remakes these days. The audience around me had a good time laughing, if that’s any indication for how inadequate this movie is, and there are a bunch of actors from Mad Men that pop up so that was fun. I wanted this movie to be decent so I could describe it as “poltergood,” but this movie was….. polterbad.

War isn’t what it used to be. We don’t have big heroic battles anymore with dozens of tanks and thousands of fearless soldiers. We don’t have lines of battleships squaring off, or intricate dogfights between honorable airmen. Often the enemy isn’t seen, and even if they were we might not know who they actually are. And declarations of war are so old-fashioned as to be obsolete. In this climate, the old breed of war film has died, and replacing it is something different, leaner and more subtle. Such is Good Kill, a war movie about soldiers who, in a way, aren’t actually fighting.Good Kill is directed by Andrew Niccol, known primarily for Gattaca and The Truman Show. It stars Ethan Hawke (Gattaca, Boyhood) as Thomas Egan, a Major in the United States Air Force. He is an ace pilot, but the problem is that he’s not flying, not really flying anyway. You see, Major Egan served a number of tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now he’s based in Las Vegas. Every day he gets up, kisses his wife Molly (January Jones) goodbye, drives to a nearby air base, and kills Islamist extremists thousands of miles away via drones. It seems like the dream assignment; Egan himself notes in the film that he “blew away 15 Taliban in Afghanistan today, and now I’m going home to barbecue with my wife”. But Major Egan isn’t happy, and he burns to get back in the cockpit and really fly again.Good Kill is an interesting war movie because it comments on the new way that we wage warfare in the twenty-first century. A key part of the film is discussing how conflict has changed now that many of the people fighting it only view it through a monitor. On the one hand Egan is physically distanced from the conflict, but on the other it also has the effect of making the cognitive dissonance of war even worse; the technology that makes him safe and allows him to live a normal life also makes him feel like a coward. This is made even worse when his unit is put under the direct command of the CIA which is portrayed in a much more negative light than the military in general is in the film. I must say I’m very interested in this new type of war film that is being developed. Good Kill is, as far as I know, the first film which deals in a major way with the introduction of drone warfare, which has so massively altered the way we conduct conflict. It goes well together with the likes of Homeland and Zero Dark Thirty in portraying a much more complex and ambiguous portrait of war than we’ve ever had before. They say that art reflects life, and so then it was only a matter of time before the age of heroic marines and suave flyboys on the silver screen ended. Grade: B+

I must admit, I’m not generally much of a fan of biopics. On the whole, I tend to feel that they are very formulaic, very predictable, and therefore very boring. Generally they are loathe to paint their subject in an unflattering light, even if they do indulge in the occasional mild criticism to keep the movie from being too flat. And generally speaking the creators of biopics are extremely hesitant to try anything out of the ordinary in these movies, resulting in an utterly stale and tired narrative. Fortunately, I can be surprised occasionally, as Saint Laurent shows. Created by French director Bertrand Bonello (On War, House of Tolerance) Saint Laurent charts the career and life of Yves Saint Laurent, one of the premier names in the world of fashion. Now, I do not know a single thing about fashion, but that’s not a problem because that is not what the movie is about. Rather, it is about Yves’s meandering life, in its ups and downs and twists and turns. He is an alcoholic, a drug addict, somewhat eccentric, and very gay, all of which make his life difficult in 1960s and 70s France. Unlike the vast majority of biopics, Saint Laurent is unafraid to show Yves in an unflattering light; at one point he nearly murders his partner by smashing his head with a marble bust. This makes for a much more engaging film than standard biographical fare, as the audience is left to make up their mind as to whether Yves is a tortured genius or just very tortured. Fittingly for a film about a fashion icon, this film is visually stunning. I haven’t seen a film packed with this much bright, sometimes gaudy colors since the last Wes Anderson film I saw. Yves’ dresses and other assorted outfits are the centerpiece of the ocular festival, but it is by no means limited to that; the film includes everything from decked-out runway shows to gay orgies and the sands of Marrakech (Yves’ boyhood home). In an era filled with every hue of brown and shade of grey imaginable (because, you know, gray and brown are ‘realistic’ colors) Saint Laurent sticks out like a flamboyant purple thumb. Honestly, it’s actually very refreshing. Anchored by Gaspard Ulliel’s (Hannibal Rising) performance in the titular role, Saint Laurent is a biopic which actually has the courage to break out of the mold of conformity and tradition and manage to try something different. Just like its namesake, it is colorful, eccentric, and more than a little ambiguous. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but for those looking for a little variety, you can’t go wrong with Saint Laurent. Grade: B+

It’s been 34 years since Mad Max 2 came out (the one that most everyone is familiar with, known as The Road Warrior in the US). A lot has changed in that time. For starters, there’s that whole business with Mel Gibson that we won’t go into here. As such, the titular Max is now played by our good friend Tom Hardy (Inception, The Dark Knight Rises). Then there is, of course, all the changes the film industry has undergone since then. Mad Max 2 was made on a budget of somewhere near four and half million Australian dollars; the movie this review is about was made on a budget somewhere near 150 million American dollars, which is something like quintuple the total gross of Mad Max 2. And finally there is the fact that movies nowadays, or at least big action movies, generally consist of our heroes running around in front of a green screen waving swords and guns around empty air. But you know there’s that old saying: “The more things change, the more things change the same”. That’s the case with Mad Max: Fury Road; in an age of mindless and obscenely expensive summer action flicks, director George Miller has shown that summer action flicks can still have soul and heart. For those of you who have never seen any of the previous Mad Max movies (which is completely fine, as this movie does not rely on the others at all), Max is a broken, haunted man. He used to be a policeman, back when the world was still intact. But society collapsed long ago, when the world ran out of fuel and the environment turned against us. Now he’s a wanderer, drifting through the wasteland, going wherever his high-powered custom car will take him. This latest incarnation of the franchise is the story of how Max came to meet a woman called Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron, The Road and Prometheus) and how they came to fight together. Specifically, the two both need to escape from an insane warlord called Immortan Joe. Furiosa is on a noble quest to save Joe’s “wives” (or as he calls them, “breeders”), while Max is just tired of being a human blood bank for Joe’s warriors. Because it’s a Mad Max movie, there’s white-knuckle driving, ridiculously awesome cars, and explosions galore. Now, this makes it sound like the average summer blockbuster. It is a summer blockbuster, but it is certainly not average. For starters, something around 80% of the special effects seen in the movie are actually practical effects. This means that almost all of the bizarre cars were actually built, actually driven through the desert to make those chase scenes, and were actually blown up at the fiery conclusion. In fact, some of the main things the CGI was used for was to give Charlize Theron a prosthetic arm and to enhance the already gorgeous scenery of the Namibian desert to post-apocalyptic levels. In this age of using CGI for literally everything (seriously, I saw a film where CGI was used to create a fake Iowan cornfield) the huge amount of physical objects being built, used, and finally destroyed gives me hope that maybe Hollywood can shake its CGI addiction. Although this film is full to the brim with fast cars, explosions, gunfights, and other things which the connoisseur of summer blockbusters expects to see, it also includes something else: a strong feminist message. Imperator Furiosa’s entire goal is to rescue these woman who are, when you get right down to it, sex slaves. The movie makes no bones about this, even if it refrains from being too explicit about it. She continually tells them that they are not objects belonging to a man, that they are people who deserve better than the shitty life that’s been handed to them and that they should fight for that better life. Furiosa herself is just as bad-ass, if not more so, than Max. Even though she is played by the very beautiful Charlize Theron, Furiosa is not made-up to look beautiful. She is dirty, and scarred, and just as brutal and violent as all the men in the movie. And what I really appreciate is that George Miller refused to make a romance story out of Furiosa and Max’s journey when almost any other movie would have had them hook up. Furiosa is, in many ways, the feminist ideal. But most importantly of all, Fury Road retains the soul of the original Mad Max movies. Tom Hardy is excellent in the role of Max; like Mel Gibson in the old films, he rarely talks, preferring to let his actions speak for him. The few times he does speaks he sounds a bit like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, but honestly that just made me like him more. The movie retains the unique, post-apocalyptic vibe it pioneered and which has since been copied innumerable times. It has the desert punk look, bad guys in BDSM gear, and the cars so heavily modified they would make the guys from Top Gear blush. Immortan Joe even has a car in his war party whose sole purpose is to carry huge amplifiers and a crazy guy who does nothing but play heavy metal guitar licks to pump up his neo-Viking warriors. In short, Mad Max: Fury Road is a summer blockbuster action flick. But it shows just how fun, unique, and (dare I say it) socially aware that summer blockbuster action flicks can be. So Hollywood, listen up. Stop pumping out endless remakes, shitty superhero movies, and any of that crap made by Michael Bay. Instead, take a look at George Miller’s Fury Road, and do more of this. If you do, you might actually be able to make the summer blockbuster something a little more than just mindless consumerist entertainment again. And we would all be thankful for that. Grade: A-

Below is a full roundup of our IFF Boston coverage from 2015, which includes 28 reviews of 20 feature-length films and 8 short films from 5 writers. Two additional film reviews are upcoming.

Your Editor-in-Chief, Mary Tobin, covered IFFBoston as NUFEC press. Her parents so happened to be in town from Iowa during the IFFB weekend, so thankfully many of the NUFEC Blog writing staff stepped up. NUFEC writer and editor, Carter Sigl, contributed several articles, and one article was contributed each by NUFEC member Andy Robinson; Patrick Roos, former Treasurer of NUFEC; and incoming NUFEC Treasurer, Arzu Martinez.

Wednesday

Mary Tobin on The End of the Tour - "In exploring ascension to fame, it explores so much more about the relationship of the interviewer and the interviewee; how both are always assessing one another while potentially drowning in their own self-doubt."

Thursday

Patrick Roos on Being Evel - "If you’re a long-time fan of extreme sports, calculated showmanship, or Hot Rod, you shouldn’t need more than the title to sell you on this movie. For others, you’ll still want to see a man who, when told by the federal government that he wasn’t allowed to jump the Grand Canyon, went out and bought a canyon of his own to jump."

Mary Tobin on Slow West- "There were a lot of deaths and there was some commentary on outlaws and children, but really nothing that I felt was phenomenal. I feel very indifferent towards the film, unfortunately. "

Mary Tobin on T(error) – “...it appears no one is watching the organizations that have systematically gained vast amounts of power and influence especially in the criminal justice system… which feels anything but just, especially in this context. While I’ve seen many fantastic films at this festival, this is the breakout; this is the film I want to watch again and again. "

Friday

Mary Tobin on Do I Sound Gay? - "... the film was a fascinating take on the impact of the voice, from scientific examinations of intonation to the use of the “gay” voice in film. The cultural impact and assessment was the most intriguing..."

Coming Soon: Mary Tobin on The Surrender

Carter Sigl on The Overnight– “If you and a few friends want to see an awful American sex comedy, by all means see this movie. Otherwise, I would say this one is a pass… Unless of course you want to see Jason Schwartzman’s dick, in which case this movie will happily oblige.”

SaturdayMary Tobin on Prom Night- "With a light, airy soundtrack, this comedy short about the sexual expectations accompanying prom night delves into the insecurities of an inexperienced young man with a fresh feel."

Mary Tobin on Hasta La Vista - "This quirky, hilarious short with a quick-witted premise could easily be too sad or too overdone, but manages to walk a comedic line throughout."

Mary Tobin on Help Point - "Two strangers looking for their cars in an airport parking lot cross paths and lament over their common woes."

Mary Tobin on Ticky Tacky - "I’m all for a film set exclusively in an office-library featuring a precocious child who shares a murderous streak with his enigmatic boss, so it was pretty exciting all around."

Mary Tobin on Desk Job - "The film managed to feel familiar without feeling overindulgent for the most part. It felt like the person who made this maybe had to convince their parents that they should be able to work in film rather than have a stable job at a large corporation..."

Mary Tobin Actor Seeks Role- "Alex Karpovsky’s portrayal of a man going off the rails for his craft feels natural, albeit disturbing. Dylan Baker may have stolen the show, though, as his medical instructor excitement flew off the screen."

Carter Sigl on H. - "...the thing about this movie is that it’s a tease. All these strange things happen, and even if they are interesting or occasionally frightening in the moment, nothing is ever explained..."

Mary Tobin on Lost Conquest – “The most exciting part of this film is, thankfully, the meatiest part: interviews with puzzlingly genuine, thoughtful, and warm people that respectfully held differing beliefs."

Carter Sigl on Wildlike- "Combining a well-written plot with a cast of experienced actors, Wildlike is a touching drama film about two people who start as strangers and slowly come to care for one another...Wildlike is a beautiful film, on both a visual and emotional level..."

Coming Soon: Mary Tobin on Stray Dog

Mary Tobin on Crooked Candy - "It feels rare that a voiceover short film shot largely in the same room and with limited visual engagement of the single subject could so quickly and delightfully engage, but engage it did."

Carter Sigl on DEATHGASM- "DEATHGASM is ridiculous, hilarious, extremely gory, and downright awesome. It’s a horror movie and splatter comedy based entirely around Heavy Metal music which does not take itself seriously in the slightest and runs entirely on sheer mayhem and absurd comedy...All in all, DEATHGASM is one of the funniest and most fun movies I’ve seen in quite a long time."

Sunday

Carter Sigl on Made in Japan - "Directed by John Bishop, Made in Japan is probably one of the most unlikely stories of either Japan or country music I’ve ever seen. The documentary charts both Tomi’s history in the music industry and her contemporary quest: to play on the Grand Ole Opry one last time."

Mary Tobin on The Look of Silence - "This companion piece to The Act of Killing is just as difficult to watch as the original installment, if not more so. That’s not to say the film isn’t fantastic in it’s ability to confront human emotion and what we expect of humanity in a striking tone; it is."

Carter Sigl on The Keeping Room - "All in all, The Keeping Room is a beautiful and terrifying film about women and war, a topic that sorely needs more attention and examination in our culture."

Monday

Mary Tobin on Lost Colony- "I really wanted to like this film, but the combination of frustrating camera choices and a wandering plot with many touched on but underdeveloped subplots was too much for this 84-min film to handle."

Arzu Martinez on Posthumous - "In their conversations, there are brief mentions of questions that could have made the story deliver, like the definition of art and its value, the difference between a real artist and a sell-out, or whether an artist should strive for greatness or happiness."

Mary Tobin on The Hermit - "Unfortunately, The Hermit felt too disorganized to pack much of a punch. For such a ripe and unique story, the exploration felt conventional and surface-level."

Andy Robinson on The Wolfpack - "Moselle positions herself as a fly on the wall in the claustrophobic apartment, but is shy about addressing her influence on the family dynamic. As the first and only guest in their apartment, it’s hard to believe that Moselle was merely an observer throughout several years of filming."

This article is part of NUFEC's ongoing coverage of the Independent Film Festival Boston 2015.

Before I dive into these films, I just want to say: damn were they good. I only attended one short film session, which was Shorts B = Bravo, a narratives collection, but I wish I could've attended more short film series. These were truly fantastic films, and getting back into the practice of watching short films is quite easy. They're pithy, because they need to be, and they're often quite funny, which is impressive given the small amount of time we have to connect with the characters or the situation. Bravo, indeed, to these six films: Prom Night, Hasta La Vista, Help Point, Ticky Tacky, Desk Job, and Actor Seeks Role.

Prom Night

With a light, airy soundtrack, this comedy short about the sexual expectations accompanying prom night delves into the insecurities of an inexperienced young man with a fresh feel. Armed with tips from his quite-sexual parents as well as a health class instructional vagina 3D model from a friend (who considers himself a “generous lover”), he sets out for a prom night he won’t soon forget. Funny and well-cast, this short delivers on the surprises and production value.

Grade: B+

Hasta La Vista

*image sadly not available*

A young, slightly awkward man living in New York City attends a party thrown by a friend. What could go wrong? This quirky, hilarious short with a quick-witted premise could easily be too sad or too overdone, but manages to walk a comedic line throughout. You’ll learn about relationships, the impact of subway singers, what true awkward behavior looks like, and maybe even a few fun facts about hippos.

Grade: A

Help Point

Two strangers looking for their cars in an airport parking lot cross paths and lament over their common woes. The bus stand hosts a “Help Point” where they can speak to someone to help locate their cars, but in the meantime there’s plenty of time for a story or two. This short felt a little overdone at times but was largely enjoyable. Thank goodness I don’t have a car to lose in an airport parking lot.

Grade: B

Ticky Tacky

Initially, this short caught my attention with Wes Anderson-esque symmetry and angles, as well as the inclusion of an all-knowing lawyer who appeared to be about eight years old. But the star of the show, Oscar Isaac, stole the moment with a tale of love, betrayal, and loss. I’m all for a film set exclusively in an office-library featuring a precocious child who shares a murderous streak with his enigmatic boss, so it was pretty exciting all around.

Grade: B+

Desk Job

In Desk Job, we accompany a man through his frustrating day as an insurance claim adjuster working from home. Largely, we only see the one man and the sound editing of the voices he speaks with on the phone is quite impressive. Having working for a large corporation, albeit without the clients breathing down my neck, I completely identify with the feelings of worthless time and meaningless emails. The film managed to feel familiar without feeling overindulgent for the most part. It felt like the person who made this maybe had to convince their parents that they should be able to work in film rather than have a stable job at a large corporation; I don’t know about their parents, but that person convinced me.

Grade: B+

Actor Seeks Role

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Short Films at IFFBoston this year.

An aspiring actor (Alex Karpovsky of GIRLS) in New York City pays his rent with a part-time medical acting gig, which involves performing the symptoms of various illnesses to help train student doctors. Although his acting coach doesn’t think he has what it takes, he truly subscribes to the Meisner technique through which the focus is for the actor to "get out of his head," such that he or she is behaving instinctively. His medical instructor (Dylan Baker) loves his flair for the theatrical and is especially excited to see him perform a series of complicated illnesses for the students’ final exam.

Alex Karpovsky’s portrayal of a man going off the rails for his craft feels natural, albeit disturbing. Dylan Baker may have stolen the show, though, as his medical instructor excitement flew off the screen. Both actors worked for the minimum amount they’re required to make accordingly to guild rules, yet their performances indicate they were paid much more. Hats off to the special effects or makeup crew for the film as well – I thought I was looking at real rashes.

This article is part of NUFEC's ongoing coverage of the Independent Film Festival Boston 2015.

When American kids learn about the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression for you Southerners out there) in history class, a couple of themes tend to pop up over and over again: state sovereignty, the Southerners’ disgust at having a ‘black’ Republican President, and of course the glorious quest to liberate the slaves. We learn the famous names like Lincoln, Lee, and Grant. We learn the famous battles, like Sumter and Gettysburg. We learn about all the big, dramatic things because they’re easy to talk about. But there are many aspects of war that get glossed over in class because they aren’t easy to talk about, things like ordinary life during war, and especially the lives of women. The history of mankind is, after all, the history of men. British director Daniel Barber is trying to change that with The Keeping Room. The Keeping Room is the story of two sisters and their family’s slave, played by Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, and Muna Otaru. They are struggling to get by in a land absolutely decimated by the war; food and medicine is all but exhausted and all the men have gone off to fight and die. The Union Army hasn’t reached their town yet, but two forward scouts have, played by Kyle Soller and Sam Worthington. After persuading the barkeeper at gunpoint and to hand over any alcohol he has left and abusing his wife, they follow Marling’s character home. What follows is a dark and brutal examination of both the plight and strength of women in war time. I enjoyed this film first and foremost because we so rarely see historical dramas from a female perspective in cinema, or any media for that matter. It is an unrelentingly bleak picture of the horror of conflict from the perspective of those who are most vulnerable to it. Although I certainly appreciated the sheer cynicism of the film, it sometimes takes it a little too far, to the point where you start to think “Oh come, give these people a break”. The movie is beautifully shot, even though much of it is beautifully awful and disturbing. And all of the actresses and actors do a terrific job, although I think Brit Marling in particular stood out. That has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I have a little crush on her. All in all, The Keeping Room is a beautiful and terrifying film about women and war, a topic that sorely needs more attention and examination in our culture. I hope that someday films such as this are shown in our history classes so we can get an idea of what the Civil War was really like.

This article is part of NUFEC's ongoing coverage of the Independent Film Festival Boston 2015.

This follow up, companion piece to The Act of Killing is just as difficult to watch as the original installment, if not more so. That’s not to say the film isn’t fantastic in it’s ability to confront human emotion and what we expect of humanity in a striking tone; it is. But watching people discuss in detail how they murdered people, often involving reenactments of where they would stab them, and laugh about it… well, it hasn’t gotten easier since we saw The Act of Killing.

The Look of Silence follows an Indonesian optometrist and his family as he struggles to understand the genocide that claimed his brother’s life. He watches the footage director Joshua Oppenheimer filmed years before and confronts those responsible for the genocide. Remember, the people who perpetrated the genocide are still in power, making this a very personally risky mission for the man, who must believe that understanding the psyche of and confronting the killers of his brother is more important than his own personal safety.Left and right, we see people proud of either conducting the genocide themselves or proud of their family members (often their fathers) who were part of the genocide. They talk about drinking the blood of their victims to “avoid going crazy.” Then, when confronted with the reality that they killed the man sitting before them’s brother, they often backpedal - no, they weren’t the ones calling the shots, they were just following orders. They regret what happened - or, if they’re children of the perpetrators, they’re proud of their father’s actions and then all of a sudden have memory loss about the whole event. “We don’t know what you’re talking about” and “We knew none of this” are common phrases used to relieve their moral responsibility to care about the events or apologize to the man in front of them.It is endlessly amazing how resilient the man is, often interviewing the genocide perpetrators while fitting them for glasses; the symbolism behind how they see the world is almost staggering. He hears his mother calling for his dead brother as she cares for his nearly blind and deaf father, and she tells him directly that she bore him to replace his dead brother. This documentary is not for the faint of heart; it truly takes something to stay in your chair. Respect for what happened, maybe? Being too horrified to move? I don’t know. But my brow spent hours being furrowed, and every time I think about this film it returns to that state.

Still, it’s worthwhile. It’s terrifying how much moral responsibility these people can put off or be numb to; but they’re being confronted with their actions, and it makes some uncomfortable but some are just as crazy as they likely were decades ago. You will be left in your seat wondering how this place in the world could possibly exist, and how we could possibly avoid a recreation of its fate.